Ryan's defense blasts disclosure of hospital visit

January 07, 2011

For two hours Wednesday night, George Ryan sat by his ailing wife's bedside, holding her hand and comforting her in a visit that has become a focal point in the latest legal squabble over whether the former governor should be released from prison on bail.

"That night she was sort of in and out, sleeping part of the time,'' family spokesman and attorney Jim Thompson said Friday. "All he could do is sit there and hold her hand. Part of the time she was awake, and they could talk."

Thompson said the decision by the warden at the federal prison camp in Terre Haute to release Ryan under guard came as a surprise even to his family and attorneys.

Federal prosecutors revealed the hospital visit Friday, prompting a war of words between the Ryan's legal team and the government in a flurry of court filings. Ryan's lawyers scolded prosecutors for trying to use the visit as "a weapon" to deny Ryan's bid for bail. "This is shabby behavior," the lawyers wrote.

Prosecutors took the extraordinary step to make a second filing in the same day -- after first obtaining the appeals court's approval -- to defend themselves against the unusually sharp verbal attack.

The latest skirmishing began Wednesday when Ryan's attorneys filed an emergency motion for his release with the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals on the same day that his wife, Lura Lynn, was hospitalized near her Kankakee home.

What Thompson had kept from reporters -- he said he was sworn to secrecy by prison officials -- was that the Terre Haute warden quickly approved Ryan's hospital visit that same day after Ryan filled out the necessary paperwork for the emergency release. Lura Lynn Ryan's doctor had faxed a letter alerting the prison to her hospitalization and pronouncing that her care was "critical from hour to hour.''

By that evening, Ryan, in prison since November 2007 for his racketeering and mail fraud conviction, was making the three-hour trip with prison guards to her bedside, where their children and grandchildren have been keeping vigil. At Riverside Medical Center in Kankakee, Ryan was kept apart from other family members but allowed to visit privately with his wife, Thompson said. Prosecutors said the two visited between about 7:30 and 9:40 p.m.

"He was extremely grateful for the two hours,'' Thompson said of Ryan. "But then here's the other side of the coin. Before he had only heard about her condition. Now he has seen her."